


misaligned (the divergence remix)

by homosociality



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Charles Xavier Has Issues, Charles You Slut, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, No Underage Sex, Non-Consensual Touching, Protective Erik Lehnsherr, Time Travel, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24950620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homosociality/pseuds/homosociality
Summary: Charles Xavier, 16, is in the future now, and he's determined to seduce his older self's lover. It... doesn't go quite as he suspects it will.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr & Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 20
Kudos: 73
Collections: X-Men Remix Madness 2020





	misaligned (the divergence remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lynds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynds/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Divergence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21169847) by [Lynds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynds/pseuds/Lynds). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Lynds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynds/pseuds/Lynds) in the [xmen_remix_madness2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/xmen_remix_madness2020) collection. 



> This is not precisely set in Lynds’s “Multiples”-verse--in that one, teenage Charles goes by Francis and there’s also a six-year-old version of Charles called Arthur running around. This was also meant to be much more wholesome, but then Charles hijacked it and made it horny. 
> 
> This gets an "Underage" archive warning because of Charles's semi-graphic fantasies, but no underage sex actually happens. "Non-Consensual Touching" is for a brief moment in which Erik tells Charles to stop groping him and he doesn't.

Charles had always thought the future would be more… futuristic.

The house hadn’t changed much--though in some ways it had been utterly transformed--and he wasn’t allowed off the grounds, so the strangest thing was the large squat television set in one of the sitting room and the cars, long and low instead of squat and rounded, that Older Charles sometimes took into town. Hank’s lab was like the future compressed, heavy equipment he’d never seen the like of before, but he was rarely allowed down there unless he was being tested on how to get back to his own time, his own universe.

It’s stranger to wander the hallways and not see servants but friends--at least, that’s what he thinks they are--Sean and Alex jogging down the hallway in matching sweats, Raven (Raven!) in the exercise room, using the strength he’s always known she has to lift weights that weigh as much as him.

It’s strangest of all to see how people seem to… _like_ him. The older him, anyway, but Charles as well. They ruffle his hair, they comment fondly on the way he looks in Older Charles’s clothes. Nobody except Raven has ever _liked_ him before, and even she has her moments of exasperation, of shouting at Charles to stay out of her head. And _everyone_ here seems to like the future him. They call him “Professor” and tease him about the way he had to be taken off the chore rota because he’s useless at cooking. They go to the older him for help and advice and sometimes just to talk. It’s dizzying. It’s tantalizing. Charles has no idea what is different about Older Charles, but he’s clearly mastered the ability to make people like him without abusing his powers, and is desperately jealous and desperately hopeful.

And then there’s Erik.

There’s Erik, who sleeps in the same room with Older Charles. Erik, who touches Older Charles with a casual possessiveness, who Older Charles touches in turn, touches that make Charles _ache_ to watch, a hand on his elbow, fingers stroking down the side of the other’s neck absently as they sit on the couch and watch television together. Erik who is handsome beyond description, Erik with his glass-cut cheekbones and low eyebrows, Erik with his sleek dark hair and hunting expression, Erik who is broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted and makes Charles feel so _small_ , but not in the way that Kurt and Cain make him feel small, in the way that his father, his real father, had made him feel… _protected_. Erik who took one look at the bruises marring his face and gently led him downstairs to the training room and taught him how to throw a punch, Erik who put himself in front of both Charles and his older self whenever he felt there was a threat nearby, Erik whose hand was warm on his shoulder, Erik whose eyes shifted colors with the light, Erik who smiled at him, dangerous but kind, when he managed to throw a punch with good form. 

Erik who, Charles knew, his older self was in love with. How could he not be?

At school, there was a boy in Charles’s algebra class. Charles had furtive dreams about him, about kissing him and… other things, his floppy dark hair and Roman nose and strong jawline, but it was nothing-- _nothing_ \--compared to the fire that lit in him when he thought of someday being Older Charles, of Erik’s arms around him and his lips on Charles’s lips and his leg slotting between Charles’s legs in _their bed,_ oh god, their bed. Older Charles and Erik were discreet about it--everybody in the mansion knew, Charles understood, but it was still not the done thing in society, and Charles rather suspected that it was only fear of Erik that kept everyone else’s comments in their mouths--but there was still the fact of their bedroom.

Charles had only peeked inside it once. Their bed had been made with neat hospital corners, a nightstand on either side, one a mess of papers and a discarded coffee mug, one neat and spare with only a carefully closed book in a language Charles couldn’t read. He’d stared at that book and imagined Erik reading to him, the soft planes of his voice rising and falling in a cadence he couldn’t understand, and shivered with desire that he’d never felt for something so unphysical, something that didn’t involve the press of bodies against each other.

He’d been working up his courage for hours now. It was late--he could feel Older Charles in the lab with Hank, he could feel Erik in the library, his mind just a little mellow at the edges, a softness that came with relaxation, with a martini and a book. So he pads out on socked feet toward the library, shivering a little in the September chill, but determined. His older self has done most of the work already.

It’s not like he’s going to replace his older self in Erik’s bed, he tells himself; his older self probably has some experience, some technique that Erik likes. But he just _wants_. He burns for Erik with a fire consuming, for Erik’s calloused hands but gentle touches, for the intensity of Erik’s gaze when it lands on him, scans him as though searching for new injuries, and it feels like he’s been touched all over by that look. He’s never felt this way about anyone before. And if this is the last chance he gets… if Hank and Older Charles figure it out tomorrow, or the day after… he has to make the most of it. He’ll die if he goes home without knowing what Erik’s lips taste like. Just once.  
  
  
  
Erik is in one of the wing-backed chairs of the library, a book open on his lap--English this time, a well-thumbed copy of _The Once and Future King._ He looks--Charles shivers. He looks amazing, as always, but the anticipation of knowing what he’s about to do sends gooseflesh racing down his arms. Erik is wearing a neat wine-colored shirt and dark slacks, a white undershirt peeking out from where the collar dips, his forearms bare so that Charles can see the taut muscle of them. He licks his finger, turns a page. Heat flushes Charles’s skin as he glimpses the darting point of Erik’s tongue. Oh god. He’s not ready for this.

He must make a noise, or project some of his abject lust, because Erik glances up sharply, his expression softening when he sees that it’s only Charles. “Charles,” he says, putting the book aside. His voice is flat, but underneath in his mind Charles can see a shimmer of concern, a fine sheen of protectiveness, and they make him weak-kneed, they make him light-headed. No one has ever wanted to protect _him_ before. In his mind, Erik thinks of him as _der Junge_ , the boy-Charles. Charles licks his lips. He slips further into the room, the hairs on his arm standing up when he slips into the heat sent up by the fire. Light flickers across Erik’s face. “Is everything all right?” he asks in that sweet, rolling accent.

“Yes.” Charles’s voice cracks around the word. He clears his throat, tries again: “Yes. I just… I wanted to see you.”

Erik raises an eyebrow and sets the book aside, crosses his ankle over his knee. “Here I am,” he says.

“Yes,” Charles breathes, and perches on the table across from him. Erik’s lips are barely parted, and Charles is torn between staring at his _mouth_ and drowning in his intense gaze, all of Erik’s attention narrowed onto Charles’s expression. He reaches out. Touches Erik’s hand. His skin is so smooth under Charles’s touch, and warm, like there’s a fire burning underneath his skin that outshines the one in the fireplace by leagues. “Erik, I--Erik, do you--”

Erik waits for him to finish. He’s _so_ patient, even when Charles nearly broke his own thumb throwing a punch the first time Erik had just gently corrected him, Charles knows that Older Charles argues with him all the time and yet Erik’s never hurt him, even though he knows that he can be annoying and he doesn’t think that’s changed just because he’s a decade older. “Do I what?” Erik probes when Charles finds his words have deserted him.

“Do you love me,” Charles blurts out, and Erik stiffens, shock spreading through his mind like lightning. He draws back a little, and Charles, desperate, leans forward, says, “Because I think I love you, Erik, Erik--”

“Charles,” Erik rasps out, and yanks his hand out from under Charles’s. His mind has gone utterly blank.

Charles is leaning so far forward now that he could crawl into Erik’s lap, bracket his thighs around Erik’s thighs and be held safe and warm, his head over Erik’s heart, but he thinks Erik might push him off, and he couldn’t stand that, he would wither into a hot mess of humiliation and despair. So instead he drops to his knees and instead of crawling into Erik’s lap he merely leans forward and nuzzles Erik’s cock through his pants, breathing hotly on the fabric over his crotch, imagining what’s underneath it. Saliva collects in his mouth at the thought of putting what he expects to be the long hard length of him into his mouth. “Please,” he gasps, “please let me--”

“Charles, stop,” Erik snarls. Charles bites his lip; he thinks he might cry.

He fumbles for the buttons of his shirt, stripping it off hastily. “It’s okay,” he says, the words tripping over each other in their rush to get out of his mouth. “It’s okay, see, I want it. You can touch me--you can do anything to me--it’s just like touching _him,_ right? Please, please Erik, I want you so bad, if you don’t touch me I’ll die, please, please--”

He reaches for Erik’s zipper--

“Stop. _Stop!”_ Erik shouts, and shoves Charles back, not harshly but forcefully enough that he topples over. At once, Erik is standing, towering over him, and Charles abruptly feels small again, but this is Erik, Erik would never hurt him, unless he was breaking his heart. Erik seizes him by the forearm and pulls him upright, but holds Charles at arm’s length from himself, he’s breathing hard and he looks _bewildered_ and Charles feels his stomach drop to his feet. “What the hell? What--Charles--what were you _thinking_ \--”

“It’s not so different, is it?” Charles all but wails. “You let _him_ into your bed, why not me?! It’s the same thing--!”

“It is _not_ ,” Erik says through gritted teeth, “he’s an adult, you’re a _child_ , you can’t possibly think I would have really--and you’re--” His eyes scan Charles’s bare chest, that gaze that always makes Charles feel as though he’s being _touched_ , and with a rush of horror he remembers the bruises. They’re fading now, he’s been here in the other timeline for so long, but they’re still ugly purple-yellow starbursts on his skin where Cain had hit him, and Erik runs a finger over a particularly bad one over his ribs. It doesn’t hurt, Erik is so gentle, but Charles is mortified; he tries to twist out of Erik’s grip, to grab his shirt and run back to his room, and Erik lets him but slams the door shut with his powers, his mind lighting up in a burst of energy and lines of magnetic force, so that he can’t escape.

Panting, Charles clutches his shirt to his chest and tries to cover up the worst of it, tears prickling at his eyes. _Of course_ Erik doesn’t want him. Of course Erik can see how broken he is, why would he ever want a thing like Charles, why he even wants the Charles of now in his bed escapes him, he’s so handsome, so strong, he could have anyone, people who could please him much better than a skinny boy with bruises on his back and chest. “Sorry, sorry,” Charles realizes he’s gasping, and he _is_ , he’s so sorry he overstepped, he’s sorry that Erik will want to stop training with him, stop ruffling his hair, stop playing chess with him when Older Charles is busy. 

“Charles,” Erik says, his voice taut but lower now. He takes a swift step backwards, putting distance between them, but his voice is kind, it feels like a caress across his shoulders. “Charles, please, sit down,” Erik says, and Charles miserably and obligingly curls himself onto the couch, cramming himself into its corner as much as possible. Erik sits down next to him, far enough away from him that Charles can no longer feel his heat above the heat of the fire, but close enough to pin him with his gaze. “I’m not a telepath,” he says. “I can’t just know what you’re thinking the way you do. You have to tell me.”

But Charles can’t tell what Erik is thinking right now--thick steel walls have slammed down around Erik’s mind, and Charles can only peer through hairline cracks and catch wafts of protectiveness, of trepidation--of horror. He shrinks back further. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again. Erik reaches out and takes his hand, not a coy, seeking touch like Charles had used earlier, but a warm, sure grip, all reassurance and comfort.

“So you’ve said. But you still must tell me why you did that.”

“I just--wanted to see what it would be like,” Charles says faintly, and it’s true enough. He had wanted to see what it would be like--with Erik.

“And you thought you’d come to me because of… what your older self and I share? Ah, Charles, there’s no need to rush. There will be boys--and yes, girls too--plenty of them to kiss and touch and learn with in your own time.”

“But you’re…” Charles’s gaze flutters down to where his hands are clenched in Erik’s shirt.

“I’m?”

“…a _real_ man,” Charles says in a rush. Erik’s not like Kurt, not at all, he’s not cruel or neglectful, he’s a _protector_ , he makes Charles feel _safe._ How could he ever try anything with the boys and girls his age when they’re nothing like Erik, when he wouldn’t feel _safe_ in their arms? Erik flushes and withdraws his hand, and Charles cries out and reaches for it again; he can’t do this if he’s not holding onto Erik, he can’t _talk_ about this without the grounding connection of Erik’s skin against his. Erik lets him hold his hand, his fingers wrapping around Charles’s, calluses and scars rubbing against his skin.

“Charles--” Erik says, flustered, then shakes his head, the words slipping off him as easily as water. “No. You know better than to ask me for this. Did you think I would betray you like that? That I would _hurt_ you like that?” Erik seems hurt himself, and Charles longs to place his hands on Erik’s face and stroke gently, to soothe the lines of his expression away.

“You let _him_ touch you,” Charles accuses. “Do you not want--is it because of--the bruises? Because I’m--I’m broken? They’ll fade, Erik, and they don’t even really hurt anymore, or--” a thought comes to him-- “do you… want to leave marks of your own?” He looks up through his eyelashes, trying for coy but feeling desperate. “You can, you know. Be rough with me. I can take it. Like _he_ takes it.”

Erik says something impressively foul-sounding in German. Moving jerkily, he pulls back from Charles, whose cry of protest doesn’t move him, and reaches for his buttons--and oh. _Oh._ Maybe Charles will get what he wants after all. Charles watches hungrily as Erik undoes each button, kneeling on the sofa cushion for a better vantage point. Erik yanks off the shirt, then reaches for the undershirt--

\--and in one fluid motion, he’s bare-chested, and Charles drinks him in, hastily memorizing the sight in case this is all he ever gets to see. The planes and angles of his chest, the concave slope of his skin stretched taut over his ribs, his nipples, dark and low and small on his pectorals, god, Charles wants to seal his mouth over one of those nipples. The scars--

Oh, god, the scars.

They ripple over Erik’s skin like a network of remembered pain. Thick, ropy scars around his wrists, neater clean-lined incisions webbing across his chest and abdomen--like surgical scars, only there are _so many_ of them--Charles claps a hand over his mouth in horror when he realizes how much _pain_ there is written on Erik’s skin for anybody to read, for anybody to see how vulnerable he has been in his life. Erik looks at him, gentle, like he knows this is a shock, and reaches out and takes Charles’s hand and presses it to his skin, not sexually, clinically, a mild _You can touch._ Charles’s shaking fingers map out a gnarled and knotted story on his skin. “Who--?” Charles gasps.

“You know the man we are training to engage, Sebastian Shaw,” Erik says, and Charles nods, because he’s heard that name, murmured lowly when Charles was thought to be out of earshot. “It was him who did this to me. Some others, too, but… mainly him.” Charles’s thumb traces a patchwork of fine white lines just above Erik’s heart. “You see, Charles, I would never judge you for the pain you have endured. Not you. Not ever.”

Charles lowers his trembling hand and acknowledges, privately, to himself, that he’s a little out of his depth.

Erik pulls his undershirt back on and settles next to him on the couch again. “Charles,” he says firmly, “you are not broken. And yes, I do love you. Both your older self and the boy he once was, the boy you are, I love you completely. But what you are asking me for is… something else entirely.” 

His expression grows fierce and resolute. “I would _never_ , Charles. Never.”

Charles’s face crumples. He’s more in love with Erik than ever, he thinks; if his older self weren’t around he would stay and wait, wait forever, for Erik to bestow him with one of those searing, heady kisses he’s read about in Raven’s romance novels. Erik would be a good kisser--sure and focused, completely attuned to Charles’s pleasure. “There’s never been anyone like you,” he confesses, and he means it in so many ways. There’s never been anything with Erik’s mind, all steel girders and ticking compartments, a mind Charles thinks he could swathe himself in and luxuriate in. There’s never been anything like Erik’s care and compassion, like Erik’s fierceness on his behalf. There’s never been anyone as handsome, or as extraordinary, or who understands Charles the way Erik does. He wants to impress Erik, wants to always be around him, wants to know what those large hands would feel like roving across his body. And instead he’s made a fool of himself. He blinks, and tears slip from his stinging eyes.

“Oh, _Charles,”_ Erik sighs, and reaches out his hands, and without shame, without question, knowing that he looks like a child seeking comfort and not caring, he clambers into Erik’s lap and straddles him. Erik isn’t hard against him and Charles’s own erection has gone down with the humiliation, and Erik obviously means the gesture as one of comfort, not carnality, but Charles is still _sitting on Erik’s lap_ and that sends a little thrill up and down his spine anyway. “I won’t be sorry for this. I might be a monster, but not to you. Never to you.”

“You’re not a monster,” Charles mumbles into his shoulder. Erik says nothing, just strokes his long fingers through Charles’s hair. Charles puts his cheek against Erik’s collarbone and shudders, soaks up the heat of the line of Erik’s torso against him, and slowly calms, his hiccuping breaths fading to a tired shakiness. Erik comforts him, all the steel of his posture turned soft and yielding for Charles’s sake. Charles wonders if Erik thinks of it as comforting a child. Charles himself thinks of it being comforted by his soulmate.

After a while, Erik starts to hum. Something low and rhythmic and soothing. A lullaby, Charles thinks with self-disgust. But it helps. So he can’t complain.

“I’m sorry,” Charles finally says, still clinging to Erik’s undershirt. Erik lets him go. Charles feels cold where his hands had been; he shifts backward so he can look at Erik, who studies him with those lovely pale eyes.

“It’s… all right,” Erik says. And then, like he knows how much Charles needs to hear it, he adds, “You’ll be all right,” and Charles sways toward him, caught like a sapling in a strong breeze, and Erik runs a gentle hand down Charles’s cheekbone and _leans forward_ and presses a kiss, gentle, to his forehead. Charles’s skin tingles when he pulls away. “It’s late, Charles. You should go to bed.”

Charles nods. Erik gropes for Charles’s discarded pajama shirt and settles it over Charles’s shoulders, does up the buttons slowly, kindly, which is good because Charles’s hands are shaking. The world is very quiet around them, just the faint snap of kindling roasting in the fireplace and Erik’s soft breath as he makes Charles presentable, as though they really had had a blistering tryst in the library after dark. Charles stands, feeling coltish and unsteady. “Good night, Erik.”

“Good night,” Erik murmurs, his gaze searing where it lingers on Charles, and Charles flees.

The humiliation of it all makes it difficult for him to get to sleep that night; he tosses and turns and hides his burning cheeks in the pillows, until finally exhaustion drags him under. But when he does dream, he doesn’t dream of Erik _touching_ him, like he has every night since he came to the future. He dreams of Erik’s hands, but instead of stroking his cock they’re clasping his shoulder, approving; he dreams of Erik’s smile, but instead of sharp-edged and dirty it’s warm and fond; he dreams of Erik’s voice, but instead of whispering endearments and insults against the back of Charles’s neck it’s raised in a lullaby, threading throughout his dreams.

Charles dreams about Erik lying next to him in bed, just holding him, his face pressed against Erik’s shoulder again, Erik’s arms warm around his waist. He has elaborate story-dreams of Erik coming back with him and killing Kurt with a paperclip through the eye, then laying him down on Charles’s four-poster bed and fucking him. He wakes after a dream about Erik teaching him how to cook, with more patience and kindness than any of the cooks at home had ever shown before. He opens his eyes and listens to the sound of the mansion waking up around him; the sleeping buzz of Older Charles’s telepathy from his room; if he listens quietly, the hum of Erik’s mind, ticking away, next to him. 

For the first time, he imagines going back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame) for the beta and [lavenderlotion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/pseuds/lavenderlotion) for the tireless cheerleading.
> 
> I am at tumblr as [homoethics](https://homoethics.tumblr.com/). Please comment; constructive criticism welcome.


End file.
